animation

[old falcon]

Also nice slugcat model, did you make that?

[tranquil fable]

i did thanks :D

[old falcon]

Very cool!

[tranquil fable]

i'm trying to make a 3D rainworld thing

[old falcon]

I'll play it.

[tranquil fable]

i made some of the other creatures too

i'd have to ask the devs if they're okay with me handing it out (if i ever complete it) cause it has the game sounds and stuff

its mainly a learning thing for me

but it'd be cool to have a little 3D rainworld where you can run around and survive

i've never made a game before so i'm not sure how far this will go haha

[old falcon]

Yeah rain world does use some procedural magic in their animation system, it's great

[tranquil fable]

yeah i want to mimic that in 3D

somehow lol

[old falcon]

Good luck! Control Rig is the right tool for that

[tranquil fable]

thanks

i'll have to use the spider tutorial for the dropwig...

and somehow get it to stick to walls

[nimble torrent]

I definitely feel like 'proceduralness' is a slider rather than a switch.

[tranquil fable]

i know its gonna take a lot of work

[old falcon]

In that case for Rain World it's maxed

Probably

[nimble torrent]

Kind of? I think think a better term for it would be 'environmentally reactive characters'. Because they chose the pace at which rain slug walked, the arc of the jump on the lizard critters. They chose those things, those are authored.

So... kind of.

[old falcon]

Oh, so there's an entire rabbit hole of proceduralness that you can go waaaay down into huh

[nimble torrent]

Ish? It's more that most games are in those waters already. A game that controls the upper body of their character to point a gun to follow the mouse - that's procedural. It's a spectrum. Rain World is highly reactive, but the fact that you authored something with float values and sine waves rather than animation sequences seems, to me, to be a difference of scale, not a difference of type.

But this is both pedantic and silly, so I'll stop.

[tranquil fable]

a new problem x")

now i have to rotate the hips in place somehow

following this tutorial:
https://youtu.be/y2WzNvJZk0E?si=fgzDg7abR6oKenEr&t=622

the nodes are a bit different too

i'm using latest unreal

I think 5.4.1

now i've somehow accidentally hidden the controls :(

i give up for now, its too frustrating :/

[nimble torrent]

It's good to take breaks.

[viscid willow]

this exactly how i find which axis is correct, especially for aims

[nimble torrent]

Oh, 100%, me too.

You can think about it, or you just bang on it with a stick until it works.

[viscid willow]

lmao

https://tenor.com/view/monkey-working-hammering-hammer-gif-14039888

me building control rigs

[viscid willow]

There's a hotkey "T" to hide/unhide controls which you may have pressed. I've certainly done this before.

Why "T"? I dont know

[elfin axle]

https://github.com/Sixze/ALS-Refactored/discussions/196

anyone know what they mean here by anim slot?

I cant find a way to set it to 1 or 0

[nimble torrent]

They probably mean the Montage slot.

You have a variety of 'slots' for an animated character that you can play montages to.

The montages come through the associated 'Slot' nodes in the animation graph.

(this is not very well surfaced in my opinion)

[elfin axle]

hmmm ig

but the montage slots dont have 0 or 1 values

or do they?

[nimble torrent]

If you're somehow blending them into the other animations, then they could!

It would be on the blend node, not the slot node, but they are often used in pairs.

[elfin axle]

hmmm i see

[elfin axle]

alr so

i found that my montage is going hyper fast, and not transitioning back too well

and sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt

the play rate is also like 0.05

wild stuff

[nimble torrent]

Your 'Default Slot' node there is unplugged.

I'm guessing that's intentional?

If I had to guess, my guess would be - they're using slots for things in the vast nest of their animation BP, and you playing a montage to that slot outside of the framework they've established is likely causing undefined behavior in the graph.

This is why you're seeing bizarre or random-looking effects.

[elfin axle]

i mean , this is what theyve said i should do lol

[nimble torrent]

Neat!

[elfin axle]

but yeah really wierd

[bronze fable]

My character is basically an upper and lower set of animations. Lower half is all the locomotion stuff, upper half is whatever weapon combo the character has equipped.

Right now my upper half applies a dynamic additive to my lower locomotion half. This works fine, but it's very stiff. The upper half does not pick up arm motion from the locomotion. Is there a way to dynamically add arm swing from the lower half into the upper half? I've tried using alpha values but it doesn't have the intended outcome.

I want to play the upper half animation but add just a smidge of the lower half's arm movements

[elfin axle]

FINALLLY working

all i had to do was delete the curves

im so proud of myself lmao

been at at for 15 hours today

[viscid willow]

Would it be that you want the lower half applied as a dynamic additive to the upper half instead? And by lower half I imagine you'd apply a full body locomotion animation to another full body idle pose.

Youd need a base idle pose and then all your other weapon poses would be some variation of that. That way your locomotion motion will come through your weapon pose and you can weight the arms less or more as you like.

I do think you'll need to split the arms away from the upper body blend for more control.

IIRC this is how ALS is setup and seems to be the way fortnite approaches held items, based on the GDC deep dive they released.

[viscid willow]

woo 🎉

[bronze fable]

Is swapping their order what I need to do to pick up that motion? I can give it a shot.

Yeah, my base layer is full body locomotion. I cache that full body, apply the upper additive, then I blend the additive back onto the full body. I have a number of bone masks I can swap to, one of them is arms-only. I can try that as well.

All my weapon poses are made from the same "brandishing" idle animation. But they're single frame additives and I want to pick up some of the skeletal movement.

[viscid willow]

Ah yep makes sense!

Yeah I think you wanna apply the additive the other way around. If you do that it means your locomotion is additive to the base pose, so if you have no weapon equipped you will see your locomotion animation as normal. But if you add that dynamic additive motion to a different base pose, you can have different grips and hold poses etc with the locomotion coming through. You'll absolutely need to curate how much the arms are influenced etc

[nimble torrent]

Hurrah!

[bronze fable]

Okay I think I'm maybe misunderstanding this additive stuff. I'm making a dynamic additive in reverse, then applying the additive to the the upper arm sequencec, then blending the Locomotion back onto it (arm exclusion is all bones except arms)

[viscid willow]

That looks correct. Although:

1. I think you'd want to make the Base Pose for your MeshSpaceAdditive a dynamic sequence player (like you have at the top there) so you change what you're adding to so you can see a difference.

2. The Base Pose for the Dynamic Additive can be one "universal" base pose which you build your other base poses from so you have a foundation for all your additive calcuations.

3. I think you'd want the base pose for the layered blend per bone to be the same pose as your MeshSpaceAdditive base pose so that you can use the layered blend a bit like a Mute.

[bronze fable]

1. Yeah the top is being cached as UpperArmSequence and used in multiple spots.

2. So for a dynamic additive, I thought I was supposed to use the current full body pose, which in this case would be the locomotion layer? I can put the idle animation it was made from in there, but I was under the assumption I didnt need to do that (I also barely understand dynamic additives)

3. I will swap it and try that

[viscid willow]

The way I like to think about dynamic additives is it's Additive Pose - Base Pose. So if you apply the result of the Dynamic Additive to the same Base pose you will see no difference, but if you took the Base pose and say, raised the arms, to make an Altered Pose and then took that (Additive Pose - Base Pose) and applied it to the Altered Pose you would see the Additive animation, in your case the locomotion, with the arms raised the same amount as in your Altered Pose.

I hope that makes sense, it's certainly confusing to hold in your head.

[tranquil fable]

How can i fix this with the pelvis/hips control? the rotation is wrong now and i'm not sure how to fix it 😅

[elfin axle]

Thank you guys!!!!

[bronze fable]

Holy cow. I have been trying to get this to work for WEEKS. I still don't understand exactly what is going on here, but I was able to get this to work the way I wanted. The additive applies the stance and picks up arm swing. THANK YOU.

I'm going to have to add a method for handling injecting the idle pose, but injecting the idle as the base seemed to do the trick. I did have to add a second blend to add that new motion in...I don't know if this is optimal config, but it works

[tranquil fable]

This is what I have for my character's control rig so far, the legs and the hips, but the pelvis gets rotated 90 degrees and i'm not sure how to fix it.

[viscid willow]

Ah cool I'm glad it works! 🎉

In my head I think you wouldnt need that second layered blend. You'd want to replace this node with your UpperArmSequence Cache at which point I think you could achieve the same effect with reducing the blend weight on the first layered blend.

But if it's working as you expect then leaving it be is also a very good option haha.

[bronze fable]

So if I do that, the lower half is just idle, no locomotion. I think that was the first thing I did after I read your message, but I somehow lost locomotion data.

I also have 0 idea what I'm doing lol. Two layered blends shouldn't be too big of an issue, right?

[viscid willow]

i guess not haha 😅 my guess would be that your layered blend settings are masking out the lower body. Could you share what your layered blend settings look like? I wonder if it's just stomping over your lower body

[bronze fable]

That first blend is ArmsOnly, which is this:

[viscid willow]

oh, what if you flipped these?

[last plume]

Any ideas why my Animation wouldn't be playing when I drag it into the scene? 5.3

Its partially playing...

[bronze fable]

I tried flipped with both the UpperArm and the Idle as the blend pose 0, I get weird behavior on both. One of them is back to static animation with no skeletal additive and the other one is doing something weird with the legs

[viscid willow]

haha in that case ignore me 😅 the solution that works is the one that works

[bronze fable]

I mean you helped me navigate this thing, and I've literally been messing with it for weeks (well not just it, but loads of stuff related to animation). I would have been doing this much, much longer without you

[viscid willow]

I'm glad we could get it working 👍

[pliant zodiac]

If you wanna enable an animation post process bp for SKM_Manny_Simple you need to open Skeletal Mesh and under asset details search for Post Process Anim Blueprint and add one (either a custom one or in this case the default one)

I haven't looked into this stuff myself yet, but there is some documentation and maybe you can find some more tutorials https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/AnimatingObjects/SkeletalMeshAnimation/AnimPose/PoseDriverNode/

[last plume]

Animation only affecting head?

The rest of the body stays in T-Pose.

[pliant zodiac]

Does your animation play fully when you open it normally and it is not in the scene?

[last plume]

Plays the Animation Player... Not when the game is playing..

[pliant zodiac]

Do you use an Animation Blueprint? Or you wanna call it directly

[last plume]

Just dragging it into the scene and I can see its not working.

No Animation BP.

[pliant zodiac]

Are those settings checked?

[last plume]

Yes

[barren fiber]

anyone knows how to child virtual bones in here

[pliant zodiac]

Child them in Control rig or in the Skeletal Mesh editor?

[barren fiber]

you cant change them in skeletal mesh editor

you cant change the locations either like done here

[pliant zodiac]

Usually you create them directly in the correct place

[barren fiber]

and then you cant move them about

[pliant zodiac]

Lemme look

Let's see if we enable those if we can do that

Sadly only normal bones but not virtual ones

I have to little time to look if you can reparent them with a control rig setup

Guess you can't not even through control rig

No you have to create them directly how you need them

[viscid willow]

This ☝️ which ever bone you select when you create them becomes the parent, and you assign a target.

[nimble torrent]

There's a very good reason for this. All skinning is done relative to a particular pose. You're storing offsets of the vertices relative to the pose they were in when you initially bound the model to the skeleton.

So moving them is tricky.

[nimble torrent]

What's it doing instead of working?

[nimble torrent]

There's a couple of ways you could fix this:

1. You could make the initial transform of the control identical to the initial transform of the pelvis.
2. You could add an offset in the code to correct it.
3. You could add an offset null, to hold the correction.

Personally, I would probably use 1, unless there is a really strong compelling reason to do otherwise (like gimbal lock or something).

[boreal thicket]

Not sure if this is programming or animation but….
I Created a blueprint function in a project of mine to replace the player skeletal mesh during runtime, the issue I’m having is that when I the mesh changes in the blueprint, the characters pose resets to an A-Pose. I need it to maintain the previous mesh’s pose after the change,

Any suggestions on how I can get it to keep the animation pose while changing the mesh?

[old falcon]

Copy pose from mesh could help? Would require you to have 2 skelmeshes that you toggle visible at runtime

Instead of switching out completely

[deep oak]

is these values correct?

[peak nacelle]

hey guys, how do i increment a value (cpp equivalent to +=) in control rig scripting? i have the code in the image connected with the forward solve, but it always only prints the value "1"

[old falcon]

I mean are you doing that in a loop? It's a local variable, so as soon as you leave the function it is declared in it will be set back to 0

This works for example.

Note that my TestFloat is not a local variable

[peak nacelle]

🤦‍♂️ that makes sense 😂

thank you 😄

[tranquil fable]

Thanks i'll try that

[deep oak]

how can i make the walk animation proper

[old falcon]

Several ways
You could interpolate your movement speed with a curve instead of linearly to match the animation
But most of the time you would just add additional transitory animations between walk and run and play around with their playrates in the blendspace

[deep oak]

okay i have blend animations let's test them,

[dusky dust]

is it possible to "layered blend per bone" another montage while one is playing on the loop?

like this won't work

[old falcon]

You mean to play two montages at the same time and then layer them?
You'll have to make sure your montage slots are in different slot groups. Slots within the same group cancel each other out.

[dusky dust]

individual montages are in different groups

but still cancel each other

i mean

different slots

ill try with groups

[old falcon]

Has to be groups

[dusky dust]

doesnt work at all with groups 🤔

my bad, it does

thanks

[old falcon]

👍

[deep oak]

i don't know what i selected but the blendspace become very slow

animation is fine

only problem in blendspace

[barren fiber]

adjust speeds

[normal hare]

Any idea on how to fix this ?

[barren fiber]

near clip in project settings bruv

[barren fiber]

near clip plane

vroooooooom

restart engine

brutbrutbruuutttttubrutu

[normal hare]

what

[boreal thicket]

I going to have more than 2 different meshes to swap between, only one to another at a time but there’s going to be several, maybe I can make it work though

[barren fiber]

00000.000000001 poourcentage clippin

[normal hare]

Dude what are you saying

[barren fiber]

the answer lies deep in my words

[normal hare]

near clip plane ? is that a solution ?

bruh

[barren fiber]

we getting close

[normal hare]

to what

[barren fiber]

to the answer to the mystery of broken eyes

[normal hare]

Try adjusting the rate scale

[barren fiber]

when you finished this quest you get 1 gold coin and an apple

[normal hare]

Only the animation will change speed if you adjust the rate scale, tell me if it worked

[barren fiber]

did you fix it

[normal hare]

No.

[barren fiber]

bruh

its not that hard

project setting

near clip plane

0.0000000000001

restart engine

your brain must be powered by sunflower oil

Go Project Settings
Search for Near Clip Plane
then put it 0.00001
then restart Engine

Anyways aswell this is not Animation related.

[twilit owl]

i think you've lost your marbles, and your solution is not going to solve the problem he needs help with... IE the broken hand that is not socketed correctly to the gun.

the problem he is trying to get you to solve is the gun clipping through the camera/viewport. depicted here in your screenshot.

[misty dagger]

Could someone please tell me why the anim notify isn't firing? Did I do something wrong?

[normal hare]

I think thats easy to fix but what about the hands not holding the gun correctly ?

[barren fiber]

you need hand ik

[normal hare]

and?

[barren fiber]

there is multiple ways of doing so, 10 that are shit and one i know that works

its a lot of math

[normal hare]

What is the one ?

[normal hare]

does this actually works ?

[barren fiber]

not for the hand

[twilit owl]

for the gun clipping through the camera yes.

[normal hare]

0.00001 ?

this number or this 0.0000000000001

[barren fiber]

it dont matter

[normal hare]

it kinda worked, thanks dude and sorry i insulted you

[normal hare]

Thanks it worked

i appreciate it

[old falcon]

IK finger placement on weapons, yay ✅ or nay ❌?
Fingers clipping into the weapon kind of bothers me, but I don't want to statically animate all those finger poses.
But at the same time I feel like doing 10 IK calcs for every character is a bit overkill? Even if it runs on a worker thread

Would appreciate if someone has a better alternative

[normal hare]

alternative ? you mean another solution ? i think this decent enough

[old falcon]

No I was referring to my own question 🙂

[twilit owl]

depends on how visible it is to the end user. if its on the far side of the gun and you'll likely hardly ever see it, don't bother, if your trigger finger is glitching through the gun and its constantly on screen i would put in the work.

[old falcon]

It's for a 3rd person action game, so I doubt it's really visible unless you go way up close with the camera. It's more of a personal annoyance.
Maybe this is a case for the ol' "Throw it in the backlog and see how you think about it a year from now".

[kindred wedge]

Thanks @old falcon ❤️

[old falcon]

You're welcome? Not sure for what tho!

[normal hare]

ow

[twilit owl]

in that case i would say look at how much time you might need to do it perfect. now see how well you can make it in about 10% of that, and see if its going to be enough of a problem to warrant actually putting in that much extra time. thats generally my approach to smaller details. in many cases putting in about 10% of the time and work for those sorts of problems takes out the majority of what is easily perceivable. and make a note of further ways to improve it in the future if desired. so if you havent worked on this in months or maybe even years, you can pick it up and work on it in a shorter period of time.

[old falcon]

That's a good approach, I'll consider that before diving too deeply into it

[normal hare]

Can i do two sockets for one weapon ?

[old falcon]

You mean attach your weapon on one hand and then attach the other hand on a different socket?

[normal hare]

yes

bc currently only one hand holding the gun

[old falcon]

You can with IK, but you wouldn't use 2 SkeletalMesh sockets for that. I recommend 1 SkeletalMesh socket to attach your gun (e.g. on your right hand) and a StaticMesh/SkeletalMesh socket on the gun itself to IK your left hand to

[normal hare]

ngl idk how to do that

im new to unreal and still learning

[old falcon]

Basically you can use special IK nodes in Animation Blueprint to handle that, or you can use Control Rig. Personally I prefer control rig because it gives you more agency, at the cost of higher complexity though.

There's plenty resources online for IK if you search "ue5 hand IK"
If you have questions or problems feel free to pop in here!

[normal hare]

Alright thanks!

[barren fiber]

it would be nice but it would be delayed actually

you should probally just animate the hands doing so

[nimble torrent]

I've always just had an animator do hand poses. Using finger IK for that is really overkill.

[barren fiber]

thats the way honestly

[nimble torrent]

That's interesting.

Things I'd check:

• Are you sure that that animation is playing specifically, sometimes there are copies of the same animation hanging around.

• Does the animation play the notify if I make a new Animation BP?

[old falcon]

How would it be delayed?

[old falcon]

True, I suppose I'll have to bite that bullet. Problem is I have a lot of different weapons...

[nimble torrent]

You're almost certainly going to need custom reload animations anyway so...

Like...

That is the cost of variety!

[barren fiber]

you cant calculate the offset here, its a dynamic socket since we are trying to get that fed in to control rig

[old falcon]

I'm trying to avoid having to do that precisely by using IK to kind of "smear the lines" where the animations don't fit 100% 😄

[nimble torrent]

(alternatively, you can use a weapon bone and two ik hand bones, and then ik to those - this is generally a less expensive way to do a lot of things with traditional gun animation systems)

[nimble torrent]

I'm sorry to say, but that is extremely unlikely to look good.

I don't know the level of quality you're aiming for, but generally speaking - you need custom reloads.

You can get away with a lot, but those tend to be extremely specific and identifiable actions.

They're also pretty quick - they don't tend to be a ton of work.

[barren fiber]

i would love to see this work though

[old falcon]

Not sure I follow!

[barren fiber]

will talk about it later

i have to go

[old falcon]

Relatively low quality 😄
Just looking for ways to save animation work, since I'm not an animator

[old falcon]

Took me a while to understand what this meant, but this is exactly what I'm doing. I have a Prop bone parented to my chest that I animate in world space using CR. Then the hands just get IK'd to two sockets on the weapon's mesh.

[tranquil lark]

On this topic of many weapons. I've yet to be able to work out a system where different characters can all hold the same weapons cleanly. Maybe it is because the hands aren't all the same size. I have 6 characters, of different genders. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet (heh) and have a male hand pose and a female hand pose. Then make sure all characters adhere to that hand size.

That's not even counting the character size differences 😅 (luckily I don't really have that, but a future character might!)

[old falcon]

Yeah that's another thing I've been meaning to mend by using IK a lot. My current setup works well for hand/wrist placements for any character and any weapon/prop, but I realize it's too much to also include the fingers the same way.

If I find a decent solution for the fingers I'll post it here for feedback :p

[dense trellis]

@potent fern @plucky fjord By the way, if you're still looking for a way to replicate the trajectory, I've published a marketplace plugin that extends the default trajectory component to properly replicate across the server!
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/product/replicated-character-trajectory-component

It works by fixing the calculations at their core on the client, rather than replicating the trajectory itself across the server. Ultimately, this results in lower network load and much more responsive trajectory on all clients, as opposed to a solution where you replicate the entire trajectory.

[tiny matrix]

hello, i'm making a first person game that has no character
you can still hold various weapons (a bit like minecraft, where theyre just floating), and i was wondering how i would tackle animating them
for example, let's say there is a sword and a bow the player can use

what would be a good solution to developing a system that is able to animate both without creating a mess?
i'm not sure how to use skeletal meshes in this case since theyre single items that need to be animated around a nonexistent character
i did try in the past, making animations in blender and importing them but it was a mess getting them working
the animations had to be already offset in blender and even getting them to work in unreal was weird

im fine with animating with timelines, it would be more than fine for my scope
but i''d like to know if anyone knows of a better, perhaps more efficient or organized solution

[old falcon]

Use a skeletal mesh without a mesh?

[tiny matrix]

hm? what do you mean?

[old falcon]

Just have a single vertex assigned to a full skeleton. You'll have the full power of a skeletal mesh without anything being visible

[lunar scarab]

anyone here a teacher?

[old falcon]

You can have nothing but weapon bones in your skeleton too!

Then just attach your weapons to sockets on the skeleton and animate away

[tiny matrix]

oh! so like animating a character's arms without anything being visible?

[old falcon]

Yep!

[tiny matrix]

i see, very cool

i'll try that, thank you!

[tranquil lark]

Yeah, I haven't been able to get it working correctly yet. So I'm probably just going to cry in my sleep and do it the more laborious way. Revert to monke.

[old falcon]

What kinds of things did you try?

[tranquil fable]

Thanks I think i fixed it with option 1!

[nimble torrent]

Woo!

[nimble torrent]

You don't necessarily need to have arms but having a very simple skeleton with a few bones in it for different objects is probably doable. In unreal, you always need a mesh attached to a skeletal mesh, but you can put in a box or something, and then turn the visibility off.

[potent fern]

Ah nice one! I'll give it a try and let you know.
Thanks!

[bold hemlock]

Hey folks, I'm having trouble with getting my ABPs to work with AI Behavior Trees. I have an AI tree that chases the player, that works fine. I have an ABP that when it's controlled by a player controller, works fine.

But together, the animations don't play, the character stays in idle pose while skating along and snap-rotating.

[old falcon]

Not sure if this belongs here or #gameplay-ai but it's weird that an ABP would require knowledge of the player controller, or any controller

[bold hemlock]

Yeah same, it's kind of a both situation

the ai works fine, so I figured it's in animation since the only issue is the animation

[old falcon]

If you post screenshots I'm sure we can help

Like if you have a state machine that would be good to see

[bold hemlock]

The slug is my own ABP , I put manny in also so that I could be sure it wasn't something inherently wrong with how I made mine

[old falcon]

Looks rad btw

Need to see your ABP state machine though 🙂

[bold hemlock]

Ah sorry, this is just default manny. He looks like this:

[old falcon]

Oh, using the same one then!

[bold hemlock]

Well, manny is also having the issue, so if I fix him working in this, I figure I can fix the other ones we have made aha

[old falcon]

Uh, what does the BTT chase player do?

[bold hemlock]

Just updates the walk speed.

[old falcon]

And that walk speed then feeds into what? CharacterMovementComponent?

[bold hemlock]

Correct!

[old falcon]

Hm, I'd assume manny fetches exactly that in the ABP

[bold hemlock]

Same 😅

[old falcon]

Can you check in the ABP's update function?

[nimble torrent]

I think someone had a similar problem to this recently. There's a setting somewhere called 'Update Along Spline' or something.

Without it, I don't think AI's calculate their velocities.

[old falcon]

Huh

Good to know

[bold hemlock]

Hmmmm taking a look! (to both)

[old falcon]

What an awkward thing to have a setting for

Curiously, PawnMovementComponent functions without it

[nimble torrent]

Gah, I can't remember the actual name of the parameter.

Sorry.

You're using Manny's animation BP, right?

This forum post might be useful.

I didn't ask - but have you tried just plugging a run animation directly into the output node of the animation BP?

If that works, then the problem is internal to the animbp, rather than external (the AnimBP itself is not being told to play)

[hollow saddle]

Is it possible to advance an animation that is currently played in ABP state machine (not a montage so no jump to section i guess) to some specific time or even better - to some specific anim notify state? I need to advance my attack animation which has 3 anim notify states set up in anim sequences (wind up, release, recover) to recover state in case of the attack was blocked.

inb4 split anim sequence into 3 sub sequences, use anim montages - I know all of these, but currently I'm looking for a solution specific to anim sequences in ABP state machine graph

[nimble torrent]

You can specify a start time with a float value.

[bold hemlock]

Sorry getting behind while I try to check things haha. Yes this is manny's animation BP, I can check "IsMoving" and he does a run although in play preview he's still standing still even after compiling

[nimble torrent]

And you could trigger the state changes using the notifies.

[hollow saddle]

yeah but will it work if the animation is already playing?

[nimble torrent]

When you say 'he does a run' do you mean 'He runs because I plugged a running animation directly into the main pose output forcing him to do nothing but run. Then when I tested it in game, with the AI, the character animated confirming that problem was inside the graph?"

[hollow saddle]

can you elaborate on this one please? didn't really get what do you suggest

[nimble torrent]

Notifies give you events, you could use the events to modify state in your animation BP to cause a state machine to change.

It's inefficient and cludgy compared to the montage method, which is much better, but it is hypothetically possible.

[bold hemlock]

Sorry, clarification: If I plug in directly walk/run as the only acceptable pose, he is walk/running (including when not moving) in game.

[hollow saddle]

well, in my case the situation when I need to advance the animation is not triggered by a notify within an animation, but by a gameplay event when weapons collide with each other

[nimble torrent]

Cool! So you've confirmed the problem isn't with the AI, the problem is with the Animation BP. This gives you the place to look to solve the problem.

[nimble torrent]

Sure, you could use that too.

If you need to move the animation forward (I definitely do not suggest this as a method, there are many better ways) one could, hypothetically control the current playback position with a float value as well, that you accumulate time to using deltatime.

[old falcon]

What's stopping you from playing a montage when that event happens?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, this hypothetical is weird. Unreal has a solution to this. It's montages.

[hollow saddle]

the fact that i want a specific recover animation to play which is already a part of the played animation when such situations occur

[hollow saddle]

sounds tricky, i guess i'd have to look for some other way. thanks anyway

[nimble torrent]

I mean - it would do what you want.

It's not tricky.

Just cludgy as heck.

[quiet egret]

So I'm trying to create an IK rig and I tried a few different goal solutions, seems like the Auto Create IK works fine for everything except foot movement. Any clue why my character's knee and bottom leg is shifting entirely to the right when my foot goes up? I'm pretty confused about this result

[old falcon]

You could put that recovery into a separate montage too. Not trying to be annoying, just genuinely curious

[nimble torrent]

That is really weird.

[bold hemlock]

Ah, okay. So, we're getting somewhere with this! (Sorry it took me so long to try it specifically, went down a false rabbithole).
This DOES work to get him walking, but the turning spline stuff for nice rotation does not happen, he snaps hard.

[nimble torrent]

Also, montages can have multiple tracks, that you can access individually.

[hollow saddle]

the problem with this approach is i'd have to accumulate somewhere animation playtime AND somehow mark the timing of the recovery phase manually for each attack animation and I have quite a few of them

[quiet egret]

before I had separate limb solvers and the full body ik, that worked, but i tried jsut the full body ik and got this

also

it's very fucking annoying ctrl z undos your editor action rather than movement action

[bold hemlock]

So this means movement component get current acceleration is returning false

[hollow saddle]

yeah, it's just that I'm very stubborn and I'm building my combat system montage-free, all in anim state graph with anim sequences with marked anim notify states for attack phases and combo windows

[nimble torrent]

That seems like a problem.

[old falcon]

All of which are solved by montages :/

[nimble torrent]

That seems like buying a lot of pain for no reason, but you do you.

[old falcon]

I mean if you have a good reason, sure! I like to roll my own stuff too
But that really does seem painful

Especially considering the engine kind of expects you to use them in several places

[hollow saddle]

when I started building this system I really liked the idea that I could layout complex combinations with different conditions in a fancy ABP graph UI instead of having some enormous data asset with mapping which attack can follow which based on various conditions

[bold hemlock]

Ohhh, the setting you were thinking of is "Nav Movement -> Use Acceleration For Paths" btw (In the CMC), enabling that makes acceleration no longer false, and thus trigger the animations properly too for how fast it's going.

Unfortunatley doesn't seem to solve the rotation stuff yet, but hey we're moving along

[nimble torrent]

It's hypothetically doable. You just need to chop your animations really fine, and use a lot of state to track what is happening.

[nimble torrent]

There we go! I knew it was something like that!

[quiet egret]

Okay so I have a somewhat new issue that's been existing but I haven't got around to really solving it. As you might notice, when I move parts of my character the pants and shirts sort of ignore some of the skin collisions? What do I need to configure for my character's skin/mesh so the three separate materials collide with each other? i.e., clothing top collides with skin and clothing bottom collides with skin too

[nimble torrent]

So... the simple answer to that is 'That is not a thing'. Meshes don't collide. They're mathematical abstractions, not real objects.

So if you don't want his body to clip through his clothes - the traditional method is to create a version of his body with those polygons under his clothes that clip removed.

So like, you'd have a version of his body with just his hands and feet in your case.

[quiet egret]

so git rid of all his skin besides the feet, hands, and exposed parts?

that doesn't really sound right

[nimble torrent]

That's the traditional way!

Most characters do not have geometry under their clothes.

[old falcon]

That's not simulated cloth, right?

[quiet egret]

seems like that'll make it harder for custom clothes later on

[nimble torrent]

It also saves you polygons.

[nimble torrent]

It does make it more complicated, because often one requires multiple different 'cuts' for the body.

[quiet egret]

the green top and brown pants are, just set on a really low value

[nimble torrent]

The arms to the wrist, to the elbow, to the shoulder, etc.

And those are often connected to customizable clothing.

Now, there are cloth simulations but you almost certainly do not want to be messing with them right now.

They are not the simple solution.

The correct thing to do, it do the cuts.

[old falcon]

I'm not sure how to handle physics cloth then. Won't the cloth just drop through the body if there are no verts? Never worked with it before

[nimble torrent]

Physics cloth, in unreal, with only one complicated exception, do not collide with meshes.

They collide with physics capsules in the physics asset.

[old falcon]

Oooh

[nimble torrent]

To collide with an actual mesh is vastly more computationally expensive.

[quiet egret]

I think the more traditional way is to create different LODs of the skin anyways, not delete the entire unexposed parts

[nimble torrent]

You are incorrect.

That is wrong.

[quiet egret]

Ok?

Why so hostile lol

[nimble torrent]

I'm not trying to be hostile, sorry. You can do what you want. Have fun.

[quiet egret]

Wow alright

[old falcon]

Wouldn't LODs still clip?

[nimble torrent]

They would.

[quiet egret]

Well yeah, but dependeing on the LOD resolution and detail it should be less so as players are further away, but you can still gradually simulate more of the physics as the players get closer. Like "adding" more skin vertices for better cloth physics

[old falcon]

Which will all continue clipping at every LOD, no?

Don't see a solution to the clipping there tbh

[quiet egret]

That's why I'm asking specifically about skin collision so the cloth doesn't clip through and stays on top

[nimble torrent]

That's... there are cloth simulations, but they are neither automatic, free, easy to implement, or designed to do what you are talking about.

[old falcon]

PhysicsAsset came up, no? Instead of skin mesh, use that

[quiet egret]

yeah that's what I'm looking at now

collision bodies for the skin, then apply that to the mesh

[bold hemlock]

augggh i did it, okay, for posterity, this is a balance between a few things.

1. On the Character blueprint, in Pawn Settings, Use Controller Rotation Yaw must be disabled unlike when you are actually controlling it with a controller. So if you want a version you can possess, this will have to change between possessions and ai BTTs controlling it.
2. On the Character blueprint, in the Character Movement Component settings,
   Orient Rotation to Movement must be unchecked,
   Use Controller Desired Rotation must be checked,
   Use Acceleration for Paths must be checked
   the Z Rotation Rate to be within a tolerance specific to your animation, for manny, I found 200 to be alright. Too low, he won't trigger the rotate animation, too fast, he'll snap to.

Why is a guess from me, but the Ai BTTask MoveTo and Rotation both appear to give no velocity or rotation data to the CMC for whatever reason.

Manny by default has almost all of those listed settings not capable of using this, btw, since these settings essentially disable the way that an input controller would feed it data.

[nimble torrent]

Ahhh!

I mean - good data, but yikes.

[tranquil fable]

so I'm trying to follow this tutorial (it's french but subtitles are english)

https://youtu.be/MgujyPVJfL0?si=NCrtD0PXiaM4cVS9&t=1111

but i have a problem, the video is 3 years old and the nodes are different. I tried to find the right nodes but I keep getting an error with the "at index" in the array

"Array Index Out of Bounds (count 2)"

What am I doing wrong or does this just not work right anymore??? (disconnected the nodes because it causes my spine controls to irreversibly bug out of position)

[nimble torrent]

Array Index Out Of Bounds means that you're trying to pull an item out of an array that is too small for the index you're asking for.

So you're list has five things in it, and you're asking "Please give me the sixth thing."

That's what it means.

[tranquil fable]

oh... hmm

[nimble torrent]

In your case, you're using two arrays.

[tranquil fable]

how come he didn't get the same error?

[nimble torrent]

You're looping through the array you 'Made' with 'Make Array' but you're getting from the Children array.

So my guess is, there are fewer children then there are in the array you made with 'Make Array'.

[tranquil fable]

uhh hmmm

[nimble torrent]

You generally speaking want to loop and get from the same array.

[tranquil fable]

oh?

[nimble torrent]

Or you want some other kind of association structure.

[tranquil fable]

how would i get the controls though?

one array is for the bones and the other for the controls

[nimble torrent]

Right now you have a dynamic array, the 'children', and a static array the one you made.

You could get the bone by name. You could associate them using metadata, if you're generating the controls in the On Construct event.

[tranquil fable]

could i do a similar thing to getting the bones but with the controls instead? They're not going to change so it wouldn't need to be dynamic?

or would it mess up when i finally add the arms?

[nimble torrent]

That would work too!

[tranquil fable]

nice! I think i'll do that

weird... not sure if i should even do this because it makes the controls non-movable 😅

and its still bugging out

[nimble torrent]

I think you'd usually do it backwards.

So the controls should move the bones, not the other way around.

[tranquil fable]

oh

right

there we go 😂

[nimble torrent]

[tranquil fable]

WAIT NO IT'S BUGGING OUT AGAIN 😭

it keeps changing

like messing up different parts of the body

being chaotic

I think i should just not do this part of the tutorial x"D

first it messed up the legs then i tried to compile again then it looked like above

without me changing anything

so its bugging out too much to do it

[nimble torrent]

That sounds like something that might be a cycle.

So something might be feeding into itself somehow.

[tranquil fable]

i'm not even sure what the guy was trying to do now

or if it was nessecary to do it this way

if the controls are already parented to themselves doesn't that make this redundent? and maybe also the cause of the weird bug?

guess i'm using these again xD

[lusty venture]

"traditional way" is a bit of a weird way to think about it, but for the games i've worked on we do actually end up deleting entire unexposed parts of the meshes. squishy is right where it's way more expensive to have to run cloth sim on the entire shirt and pants mesh like you have in your screenshot - we cut meshes that are hidden and only simulate cloth on certain parts of clothing, like drapey capes or the very bottom of jackets/shirts/pants

when it comes to LODs, at the point where we have to LOD down we usually also turn off the cloth sim because it's expensive

[quiet egret]

that makes more sense rather than deleting the entire unexposed skin mesh, which is what they said originally

[lusty venture]

no that's what i mean, you end up deleting as much of the unexposed skin mesh as possible

[viscid willow]

☝️ this

[lusty venture]

this is what we have for one of our characters, and the only part that is cloth simmed is the bottom of her jacket

[viscid willow]

saves you poly's + saves you work when skinning/weight painting to avoid clipping.

if you cant see the poly's consider deleting them

[mellow storm]

does anyone know of a good pipeline for managing animation branches?
holding down the same attack button in a game has 3 possible animation outcomes, i want to be able to edit 1 and see the change in 3 as well

not particularly unreal related, working in blender for ue

[lusty venture]

this is quite tricky - have you used animation layers in sequencer for ue? you could export animations into unreal and do tweaks in there?

not really an ideal way of editing though 🤔

[old falcon]

Right now natively in the engine I think there really is only Montages & Notifies/NotifyStates. The actual logic would need to be implement by you afaik

Unless you're doing it all in one big anim state machine

Which can be tricky

You can check out some of the plugins on the marketplace to get inspiration for this

[mellow storm]

oh so i have the unreal part figured out, wait for input release, jump to montage, and notifies are enough

i meant more in blender or maya, if anyone has any ideas or past experience managing thus scenario

[old falcon]

Oh ok, sorry about that. I need to get some sleep

[viscid willow]

Big long timeline in maya 😅

[lusty venture]

i'm not super experienced with the NLA editor but this addon could help as well https://blendermarket.com/products/animation-layers

my workflow is in motionbuilder and i would put everything into a story mode take to view each animation and the transitions

[mellow storm]

ill def check out this addon!

[viscid willow]

Yes ☝️ this makes the NLA editor much easier to manage.

When I've done attack sequences in Maya I animated the attack in sequence, each one back to back, even if there are holds and early outs etc. I would then copy the animation from the attack and move it to another section of the timeline from which I would build the return to Idle or the hold etc. I did this so my attack flowed nicely as a chain of animations and any breaks are additional. And since it's one timeline I can easily use the game exporter to export all my sequences (we have a handy tool now that does that and also turns layers on and off per export, very useful).

If I were doing this now I would probably use layers in Blender for the holds etc, and the NLA editor makes it easy to export the assets per NLA track.

I dont know if there's a way that you can have the changes propagate like you mentioned, unless you can copy an NLA track like it's a data block so it will update all of the instances if you make changes to one (AFAIK the animation data blocks are changing siginificantly in future updates).

[nimble torrent]

When you say 'edit 1 and see the change in 3', you're talking about the linking poses, right?

This is one of those things that I used an adjustment blend for, but I never really managed to fully automate it. It always required an animator to use it.

[tiny matrix]

is that a 3D slugcat

[mellow storm]

not exactly that, currently i have 3 actions

action 1, action 2, action 3

and i have them set up in the NLA with 2 on top of 1, 3 on top of 2

then if i want to work on 1, i hide the rest

enable 2 to override the sections so the animation becomes
startup1, hold1, hold2, release2

so im wondering if thered any known workflow for animation these branched animation paths

[mellow storm]

copy and pasting the frames seems to be the way. i tried to make a tool, but ultimately having the freedom to move stuff manually, while not without risk, is probably best

my only fear is that changes in one place now need to be copied over every time. ill investigate and brainstorm a little morr

[viscid willow]

yeah tbh that was just part of managing the scene, at least for me, when working on those assets

[mellow storm]

yeah i see. thanks for being so insightful!

[viscid willow]

np 👍 if you come up with some cool new way of doing it please let me know 😅 I fear I will become stuck in my ways

[tranquil fable]

yes :D

[tiny matrix]

nice lol
are you doing procedural animation like in the original game?

[tranquil fable]

gonna try to lol

[tiny matrix]

very cool

[tranquil fable]

i've never made a game before but this is fun (kinda)

[tiny matrix]

im sure you'll learn in no time

[tranquil fable]

i made other models too like the scavengers and the dropwig

not sure how i will make dropwig run on walls lol

[tiny matrix]

heh, good luck with that

[last plume]

Trying this again... My UE5 animation will not play when dragged into the editor. Only the head is animating?

[lusty venture]

are you using metahuman?

[last plume]

No, it has been retargeted though...

And it Animates in the Animation Player...

[viscid willow]

Hard to debug without a bit more context.

Could you share a recording of what it looks like in the Sequence view and what it looks like in editor?

[last plume]

Ya, just a second...

[nimble torrent]

Are you just dragging the sequence itself into the map?

[last plume]

Dragging Animation Sequence...

Only the head seems to be Animating...

[last plume]

Posted...

[nimble torrent]

Well, you've definitely got some kind of retargetting artifact going on with the root, independent of the playback issue. Your character should not be embedded in the plane of the preview window.

What happens if you show bones?

(type 'ShowDebug Bones' in the command line while playing in the editor)

It'll be interesting to see if the bones are moving and the mesh is static, or if the bones are also static.

[last plume]

I adjusted all the IK's and the Root down so the feet would touch the ground while animating. Before they were about 30 in the air.

[nimble torrent]

That seems likely to cause problems in the future.

[last plume]

Did the same with the Jog, but it works.

[nimble torrent]

I think you would have been better off moving the character's pelvis up rather than moving the character down into the floor.

I expect that to cause various shenanigans.

[last plume]

When I play the Animation in the Retargeter, the Character is on the Ground?

[nimble torrent]

Is it?

[last plume]

Here its in the Ground.

[nimble torrent]

OK, sure, but this is a toy scenario - and the like future shenanigans for having a negative value on the root's position are unrelated.

[nimble torrent]

You're likely to have two problems.

Or more.

I would expect more.

How did the showing the bones thing work?

[last plume]

Retargeter?

[nimble torrent]

No. This.

#animation message

[nimble torrent]

OK, but that's in the retargeter.

[last plume]

Retargeter...

[nimble torrent]

What about the level?

[last plume]

One sec..

[nimble torrent]

The retargeter definitely shows a problem. Your root isn't retargeting properly.

[nimble torrent]

OK, neat. So that's still not in the level.

What about the level?

[last plume]

How do I show bones?

[nimble torrent]

Hit the tild button while the game is playing. It should bring up a console.

Type 'ShowDebug Bones' into that console.

[last plume]

Not working? Comand isn't working?

[nimble torrent]

That's interesting.

[nimble torrent]

I don't know if that's the correct console.

One moment.

What about an animation blueprint?

Also - where you did you get your mesh from?

Does the animation play correctly in an animation blueprint?

[last plume]

I not using ABP.

[nimble torrent]

OK, what about trying that as a test? The results might be interesting.

[last plume]

CC4

[nimble torrent]

Haven't heard of CC4. What's that?

[last plume]

Character Creator 4

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, haven't heard of that one.

[last plume]

Similar to the UE one...

[nimble torrent]

Is it good?

[last plume]

It exports to UE4 like SK.

But its seems good.

[viscid willow]

Looks like a retarget settings issue to me

[last plume]

Why is it working on the player?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, that's my guess too.

I haven't used the retargetter much, which I'm realizing is a big gap in my knowledge.

[last plume]

Let me try ABP...

[nimble torrent]

At this point, we don't know what's going on. Your result appears irrational - if a skeleton can play an animation in the animation player, it usually can do that at runtime too.

So, right now, we're just asking relatively random questions, to poke at the situation to see if anything interesting falls out.

Because, on it's face, your problem appears to be without cause.

[last plume]

Doesn't show in the BP Preview Window at All... But the Jog works fine...

[nimble torrent]

As I suspected, you were typing in the wrong console my friend.

You need to run the game in the editor first.

Then hit tild.

Also, apparently, UE5 changed the name.

It's now 'showflag.bones 1'

Or 'showflag.bones 0' to turn it off.

[nimble torrent]

So the character vanishes if you plug that animation in the animation BP's output node?

That's an odd result!

[last plume]

Yes...

After the compile...

[viscid willow]

even with out the IK retargeter, you should be able to get the character animated with their feet on the ground, I think Animaiton Scaled or Orient and Scale is the required setting for the pelvis

[nimble torrent]

OK, well - that's interesting. Look like the problem is animation related, and not a mesh problem.

So that's one area of exploration curtailed.

[nimble torrent]

That seems familiar.

[nimble torrent]

Could you show a screenshot of what your animation BP looked like without the character present due to the animation being plugged into the output node?

[last plume]

Jog...

Idle

[nimble torrent]

Huh. OK.

Well I suspect that animation is super broken.

Not sure how. Not sure why.

I recommend deleting it, and retargetting it again.

Ideally following battz notes from above.

[last plume]

"I think Animaiton Scaled or Orient and Scale is the required setting for the pelvis"

Notice how the source isn't on the ground...

[nimble torrent]

Interesting. Does the root have a translation offset when you look at it?

That animation also looks a little weird. IK's all over the place. The guns shot off into space.

[last plume]

I think its just for the Target.

[viscid willow]

i've certainly seen animation sequences floating in editor before, and I wouldnt put too much stock in that being the issue. Because, the floor tries to offset itself in the viewport to avoid clipping. Notice how the floor is actually aligned to the other character's feet

in the scene setup menu there are floor settings

[last plume]

That's because I adjusted the Root and IK's for the Target.

[viscid willow]

Right. But what i mean is, the source anim isnt floating off the ground. I expect if you look at that asset in isolation it will be aligned with, if not much closer to the ground.

[nimble torrent]

I also suspect that that is not the source animation. That it's already been retargeted from somewhere.

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/nod-kermit-nod-nodding-gif-24624072

[nimble torrent]

I do sometimes wonder how aware people are that animations are copyrighted.

Like - you can't just use them.

You can get in trouble for using animations you don't own.

[last plume]

That Belica for UE.

[nimble torrent]

There was a dark souls-like that came out recently who used animations they bought in good faith - but they turned out to be ripped from other games.

Like - the people who made the animation pack were the crooked ones.

Got them in a heap of trouble though.

[viscid willow]

Oh yeah I remember that

[last plume]

It's Epic Free Collection...

[nimble torrent]

Good to know.

[last plume]

Found a few mapping issues... Trying again..

[nimble torrent]

Bleak Faith! That was the name.

[viscid willow]

Ah yep, it's still up on steam so I suppose those troubles are behind them 🤷

[nimble torrent]

They replaced them, but it certainly wrecked their reputation and their search results.

[last plume]

@viscid willow "I think Animaiton Scaled or Orient and Scale is the required setting for the pelvis"

Can you set this in UE5.3?

Here is my mapping:

[viscid willow]

The setting I'm describing isnt an IK retargeter setting: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/animation-retargeting-in-unreal-engine#howdoesretargetingwork?

[last plume]

There are no IK's in the Source... Does that matter?

Here's the same problem from June 2021:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/animation-only-affecting-head/485488

[vernal echo]

Is there a way to make for example I want to make a new animation starting at the idle animation pose how could I do that?

I can't even seem to get the idle anim to play in the sequencer

[nimble torrent]

Well, you'd probably do something like this:

• load the animation that has the idle pose you'd like to start with into the sequencer
• bake the animation onto the control rig
• use the 'control rig poses tool' (https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/animation-editor-mode-in-unreal-engine?application_version=5.0#posestool) to store the pose on the control rig
• create a new sequence
• use the pose tool to paste the pose onto the track
• animate from there using the control rig

[vernal echo]

thank you, how do you bake the animation onto the rig

I've added the animation to the sequence but it doesnt play. Sorry I havent done much with sequencer. I've made a driving pose thats about it

[nimble torrent]

Well, first you have get the animation onto the character. The way I've done it is:

• drag the character mesh into the scene
• click the 'track' button, then 'actor to sequences', then selection your animation

That should get your character into the sequence, and animating.

When you do that, what happens?

[vernal echo]

nothing happens when i play

ive done that

[nimble torrent]

OK, do you see the keys in the sequencer?

Do you see the track?

[nimble torrent]

Well, I see a control rig.

I wouldn't see that using my method.

Not at that point.

Because I drag the skeletal mesh into the scene.

Not the control rig.

[vernal echo]

ahh that makes sense lol

is the control rig poses different from regular poses?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, they're a separate tool.

And separate data.

[vernal echo]

okay

[nimble torrent]

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a way of extracting poses from a pose asset into the control rig - but if there is... I don't know it.

[vernal echo]

okay so how do I bake it

[nimble torrent]

I don't have unreal open, but right now, you can see the character, they are animating as desired, they do not have the control rig visible - right?

[vernal echo]

yes, well I have a control rig in the scene but not using for the sequence

[nimble torrent]

OK, you click on the +Track button on the existing animation track and then click 'Control Rig' and then choose the control rig you'd like to use.

That should do it.

[vernal echo]

here?

[nimble torrent]

Looks correct to me!

[vernal echo]

the idle doesnt play anymore

he went back to a pose

[nimble torrent]

Interesting.

That's not been my experience.

Which control rig did you choose?

[vernal echo]

body

[nimble torrent]

I'm not 100% sure that's the correct one.

I think that might be one used for animation dynamics.

[vernal echo]

wouldnt that be the procedural one

[nimble torrent]

Entirely possible.

Again - don't have the editor open.

But my suggestion would be - try other control rigs!

[vernal echo]

the procedural one it plays again but theres no controls

[nimble torrent]

That also makes sense. The procedural one is reading from the skeleton.

Not useful for you though.

But it does tell us that Body was probably the wrong one.

If I remember correctly, I think it was just CR_Mannequin

No addendum.

[vernal echo]

that doesn't exist

[nimble torrent]

All right. I must have remembered wrong.

OK, well I loaded up the engine and I guess it is body.

One sec.

[vernal echo]

it should be the same id imagine but im using the lyra skeleton

might be an issue?

[nimble torrent]

It could be, but I'm also experiencing a similar issue. One moment.

[vernal echo]

I see the option to bake to control rig. was that the next step?

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, OK. That's just me being dumb.

You don't use the "Track +" button to add a control rig track.

You do that if you want to make a new animation.

You use 'Bake to Control Rig'.

Then it will pop up a window with baking options (the defaults should be fine) then it should work.

[vernal echo]

so remove the cr and then click that?

or keep it in

[nimble torrent]

I believe if you keep it in, it will not work.

But I haven't tested that.

If you do, let me know.

[vernal echo]

It seems to have worked

[nimble torrent]

Success!

[vernal echo]

so I would delete the keyframes to one?

the create pose is grayed out

[nimble torrent]

That's not what I suggested. You could do that, but I would use the pose system.

I haven't much experience with it, so I'm going to have to let you google that to figure out how to do it.

[vernal echo]

Theres a forum post of someone saying its grayed out in 5.3

so idk lol

[nimble torrent]

If you can't get the pose system to work, your idea of the deleting the keys would also let you get started.

[vernal echo]

i deleted the keys and it became enabled so I think ill figure it

out

you have to select each individual key i suppose

[nimble torrent]

That seems extremely slow and unlikely to be true.

[vernal echo]

I mean instead of selecting the cr in list you select the keys. I dont literally mean selecting them one by one lol

[last plume]

I've discovered the the Paragon Belica Idle Animation is NOT working in my project with the source Mesh... I'm going to create another project to test...

No, not working... And this animation is the only one that's a different color below... What does that mean?

[vernal echo]

its an aim offset?

[last plume]

Meaning?

[vernal echo]

its like a blendspace

but for aiming

[last plume]

You're talking about "Idle", right?

[vernal echo]

you said the one thats a different color

i see what you mean now tho lol

[sharp linden]

Hey folks, anyone knows how to deal with skeleton modularity? That is, let's say mannequin will have two skins, for one it will have holster on one side, for the other it will have holster on the other, for third there will be no holster at all. They all are supposed to be based on one skeleton.

[vernal echo]

thats just the background tho. hows it broken?

[last plume]

Look at the pose above.

[vernal echo]

thats just the thumbnail

[last plume]

Well, that animation doesn't seem to be working on a stock project.

Clearly, the wrong pose... I must be missing something...

Here the in-game version:

FYI... I thumbnail color changes if its in use... lol

Maybe, its the wrong idle animation... Going to bed.. Please ping me if you reply... Thanks... 🙂

[vernal echo]

It looks like there's a foot ik. I'd look how their anim bp is setup

and the control rig

or something

[last plume]

The one on the right?

The T-Pose one..

[vernal echo]

im confused what your problem is?

then

or what youre trying to do or what

[last plume]

The T-Pose version is suppose to be an idle...

[vernal echo]

ohh okay

[last plume]

MAybe I have this wrong... Time to sleep... I give up for tonight... 🙂

Update: I used the wrong Animation, it should have been "Idle - Relaxed"... Not "Idle"... Two nights+ wasted... Now I'm going to bed... 😢

[viscid willow]

If you're intending to make a modular character then ideally you would have a single base skeleton yes and then your skins/modules are different skeletal meshes which adhere to that same skeleton definition. You can adjust proportions (within reason) and add new bones so long as you dont insert bones into the original hierarchy, so you couldn't go in and add extra spine bones for example.

New bones are typically referred to as leaf bones because you're adding them like a leaf would attach to a twig, the branches dont change but the leaves can come and go.

[viscid willow]

This video has a bit of insight into the way fortnite handles modular characters:
https://youtu.be/Zwc9uuOYfFg?si=bbDD4kD7mQqCk0do

[sharp linden]

So that's pretty much the approach I've been following. However, the issue I encountered is it can be very brittle system, often for some reason Unreal would recognize that there's a significant change in the bone hierarchy (which is not really the case) and would require to regenerate the skeleton, which is a whole different can of worms

[nimble torrent]

As a rule, if you're adding bones, you make a new skeleton. Never say yes, if it asks if you want to add new bones to your master skeleton.

That will break lots of things.

[viscid willow]

Yeah what Squishy said. Typically you should be able to add a skeletal mesh to an existing skeleton without too much hassle. Leaf bones shouldn't be considered changes to the hierarchy, they're additional typically for simulation or clothing etc, perhaps a tail

[delicate totem]

Does anyone use to set one Sequence Player Acror and change the sequence based on events in any occasion?

[viscid willow]

That sounds a bit like the inteded use case for Montages.

[delicate totem]

This sounds interesting. I change the Sequence based on dialogs, for example, and it’s up to the player to choose the dialog line. Would montages help?

[nimble torrent]

Oh boy, yeah.

[delicate totem]

Btw not in PIE but when the game is built, it crashes when I stop the sequence, change the Sequence in Sequence Player Actor and Play. I tried that in another empty project with no tracks at all and still crashes so that sounds like a bug to me

Anyone experiencing the same with 5.4/5.4.1?

[nimble torrent]

I haven't heard of that particular bug, but it's an unusual use-case you're using level sequences for.

[viscid willow]

Could be a bug, but I think you should look into Montages for your use case: https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/animation-montage-in-unreal-engine

They're basically a one off, fire and forget animation asset. Rather than swapping out the sequence for the sequence player, just play a montage, then play a different montage as you need them

[delicate totem]

I don’t think that covers my scenario. In a dialog you play characters animations, voices sound and animate other things too

[old falcon]

Montages are sequences on steroids. You can do anything sequences can and more

[nimble torrent]

It depends on if this is a fully one-off cinematic - or if it's a conversation system.

Like in an RPG.

A one-off cinematic is probably best implemented as a level sequence.

A conversation system should probably be a combination of a state machine and montages.

[delicate totem]

I’m thankful for the effort but I don’t see it: are we talking about Animation Montage? Because I don’t see how you can add tracks to animate more characters at the same time with audio, cameras and so on..

[viscid willow]

Just wanted to follow up to show a quick setup I made to take the Third Person Mannequin anims and make a dynamic additive, then apply a new pose which raises the arms. In case it's useful.

[nimble torrent]

It's not clear exactly where your aiming elettro.

Because in a one-off cinematic - you probably wouldn't be swapping sequences out.

They'd all just be one sequence.

[delicate totem]

I think I’m misleading you. I’ll take the montage suggestion in mind but, as of now:
Is anyone experiencing crashes in my scenario in a built game?

[nimble torrent]

I know I'm not, but we're having trouble understanding your scenario because it's so odd.

It seems like you're doing something very strange, possibly something the engine wasn't designed for, which is why we're trying to understand what you're doing and why.

[old falcon]

How are you doing that with sequences then?

[nimble torrent]

Rather than just saying "Nope, never experienced that!" And shrugging.

[delicate totem]

If you had ever, in UE5.4, done a thing like I did and you experienced no crash it’s apparently not a bug but something related to my setup. Although it’s strange because I tried on different computers and had the same result

[nimble torrent]

Sorry. I don't have enough experience with that system to tell you if it's a new bug.

If you share your code, and provide reproduction steps, it might be possible to debug it.

[delicate totem]

Thanks

[old falcon]

There's more people than I thought that just have their own unique way but expect straightforward answers huh
I fought the engine a lot, too, when I started. It really doesn't do you any favors

[delicate totem]

Still: if anyone is using 5.4.1 and have a minute to spare to check if changing the Level Sequence to a Level Sequence Actor at runtime make the game (not PIE) crash it would be appreciated

[solar totem]

Just to clarify, when you say Control Rig, you mean using the Sequencer to animate right?
Like this:

[nimble torrent]

Yep!

[old falcon]

Kind of a tough question here:
I have an UpperBody animation montage that I LBPB onto some combat pose. However, that animation has some undesired head pose that I want to remove in favor of the combat base pose for the head.

I see 2 ways to solve this:

1. Create another LBPB layer e.g. "TorsoAndArms" and play the montage on that. Would work, kinda worried this might explode into all possible combinations of body parts as slots.
2. Create a "Head" LBPB layer and explicitly tell the anim montage to play a different pose on the head. This however makes it so that the montage now makes assumptions about the underlying pose and likely won't be used for any other cases.

Any better suggestions? Or thoughts on these two approaches?

[odd crest]

Blend per Bone?

[old falcon]

Both solutions are LBPB yes, just wondering which one would be better. Or if there is another way

[wicked grotto]

Is it possible to trigger a event from an Animation Blueprint Transition?

[old falcon]

Yes!

[wicked grotto]

How do i get ther, i just dont see it?

oh its in the graph, i see

I guess i often confuse Events and Functions.
Where do i create the Event?
I know how to create functions but not Events.
Here you can see i created a function, but ofc i cant use it as event, my bad...

[wicked grotto]

I finally did it.
Thanks for the push in the right direction 🙂

[graceful tundra]

running into a crushing issue at the moment. I see someone else on the forums ran into the same issue, but the listed fix doesn't work. After retargeting an animation to my imported skeleton (I tried a mixamo skeleton and an epic ue4 skeleton), I go to the newly created animation and open it. UE5 crashed immediately.
Assertion failed: (Index >= 0) & (Index < ArrayNum) [File:D:\build++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Public\Containers\Array.h] [Line: 758]
Array index out of bounds: 40 into an array of size 40

UnrealEditor_DetailCustomizations
UnrealEditor_DetailCustomizations
UnrealEditor_DetailCustomizations
UnrealEditor_PropertyEditor
UnrealEditor_KismetWidgets
UnrealEditor_SlateCore
UnrealEditor_Slate
UnrealEditor_SlateCore
UnrealEditor_Slate
UnrealEditor_SlateCore
UnrealEditor_Slate
UnrealEditor_SlateCore
UnrealEditor_Slate
UnrealEditor

kernel32
ntdll

Tired in a different project as well and uninstalled all plugins

[upbeat wave]

When animating first person camera movements, is it common practice that you make these animations at the same time as the character animations(melee swing) and just treat the camera as an additional bone basically?

Or should you have them seperated and then blend them somehow?

[graceful tundra]

Update to the crash above: it only seems to happen when retargeting from the ue4 mannequin. I tried a retarget from a ue5 mannequin (a lyra animation) and I have no issues opening the newly created animation.

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, attaching a camera to the character mesh in a first person game is pretty common.

[upbeat wave]

and then just animate it at the same time as I do the animation for the arms?

[nimble torrent]

If it's an animation that needs camera movement, yeah.

I strongly recommend keeping that kind of movement rare.

It makes some people ferociously nauseous.

[old falcon]

🤚

Me

[bronze fable]

This is indeed useful, thank you! You're doing this with no layered blends, eh? I need to give this a shot

[pure void]

Is it a bug? When using montage play, the returned length doesn't take the play rate into account. So I tried to get the play rate to multiply but it is always 1!

Ok using "Duration" instead of "Montage Length" gave the actual time. But I still don't get why play rate is not synced with the ABP...

[nimble torrent]

It's because you might want to get the absolute length of the montage rather than the time modified length.

Being able to get both could be useful.

[upbeat wave]

Thank you for the help 🙂

I might make some kind of toggle for it in the settings, good point

[nimble torrent]

It's a good idea! Camera sway while moving too. Having accessibility options to turn that off is really appreciated!

[upbeat wave]

When you say people can be sensitive to camera movement in fpp, do you know if most of those affected by this will feel even the slightest camera movement a little unsettling or is it just mostly the big camera movements that is problematic?

[nimble torrent]

This is definitely something that's on a spectrum. The problem is usually when the visuals of what the person is seeing do not match the sensations of their body. This disconnect is what causes the nausea - it's an anti poison response. The body thinks "Oh no, it looks like I'm moving, but my proprioception says I'm not. I must have swallowed something that is causing me to hallucinate! Better vomit now to get the bad things out!"

So, undirected camera movements that are relatively stable (like, the character standing still and looking around) - those seldom cause much nausea, because the player is stationary.

It's when you start swinging the camera and the character around at the same time that people get real sick.

[upbeat wave]

Okey, these things are good to know.
Hopefully a toggle in settings for the combat related cam movements can be created somehow

[nimble torrent]

It can!

Look up 'GameUserSettings'.

[upbeat wave]

Will do
Thanks 🙂

[sacred fern]

I think there is a bug in 5.4 or can someone explain this. Below is 5.3 vs 5.4 using my reload animation with idle additive. 5.4 adds head movements to the reload+additive that don't exist in the animations automatically in what appears to be based off of spine or neck rotation.

This is pretty game breaking for me unless I can find a workaround.

[quiet egret]

What's the best way to create animations for your third person character in Unreal Engine 5.4? I keep seeing a lot of level sequencer tutorials, but I thought there was an asset I could create to modify the specific bones and such of a my character's rig with keyframes, then save that as a "animation" asset

[old falcon]

That's control rig being used in sequencer, yep!
Whether that's the best way depends on you and your other options

[quiet egret]

Really? I'm surprised there isn't a separate thing for it, huh

cause I thought the level sequencer was mostly used for cutscenes, that stuff

[old falcon]

Sequencer can be used for more things than cutscenes

Animation being one of them :p

[quiet egret]

Like I can't seem to find a way to use my IK rig in the level sequencer

[old falcon]

I don't think you can, don't think that's what an IK rig is for either
You'd need to create a control rig. Or you can use a simple FK rig in sequencer too

[quiet egret]

huh I'm a bit more confused now, because for my modular rig it seems like all the modular components are in the right spot, but when moving say the hand or feet it doesn't change the rest of the body like the IK rig would

[old falcon]

Not sure I would expect the rest of the body to move... that would be an awfully long IK chain

[quiet egret]

well not really

for instance, my ik arms move my body by chaining the Shoulder R as the root, then Hand R has the finish goal. Then I have another solver that moves my shoulders based on my head and spines

etc

it's at most 3 bones

this is my modular rig lol

compared to ik

that's what i mean

[old falcon]

Then it's moving the shoulder, not the body, right? But anyways, might be the modular CR is set up wrong or just buggy. There's plenty of people having issues with it atm

[quiet egret]

Well I did use the forwards solve, but for some reason it kept wanting me to place shoulder modulars at the root of the object

despite the naming convention being correct

[quiet egret]

also that's confusing, the IK is clearly moving the upper body

there's not a lot of info on modular rigs and ngl it's getting annoying

[old falcon]

They're too new, need more time in the oven. Plain CRs work though.

[quiet egret]

and i just crashed when attempting to change the gizmo controller size

[viscid willow]

Oh yeah, ill whip up the layered blend bit when I'm back from work.

[vernal echo]

I'm trying to bake animation to control rig but the option isnt coming up

[old falcon]

Your CR needs to have a backwards solve

[vernal echo]

right i mean i did this last night.

it just wont show the option in the actions section

[old falcon]

Huh

[vernal echo]

last night i just added to manny to the sequencer. Added the animation and in actions bake to control rig

but the option isnt there

nvm its not under action but right clicking the mesh in sequencer

[glossy dew]

Hi. Was wondering if someone could assist me, please?
I am new to Unreal Engine and all of this - So I'm watching tons of YouTube videos and teaching myself as well.

Today, I downloaded preset characters and movements and spent hours of watching videos.
But I seem to be having an this issue where it seems to be compressing my character. Some movements work fine and some compress the character.

Is this an issue with the character, the movement or am I missing something perhaps?

[opal jay]

Does anyone is using animbp template? i want to know if its already stable

[little walrus]

it looks like some of the animation clips are set up for a different skeleton. They are different from UE4 to UE5, or could be a scale problem

[warm garnet]

What would be a good approach for creating a modular human than could be used for a dismemberment system? I can think of a few ways with some potential problems:

1. Using a skeletal mesh component for each body part (all part of the same skeleton), play the same animation for all of these. This would be easy enough to create the dismemberment logic for, but I worry about performance and other complications keeping several skeletal meshes in sync.

2. Using a single skeletal mesh, hiding parts of the mesh based on bone weights or some other method (does metahuman do this?)

Also worried about the seams that would be created between body parts. It's easy enough for a robot like character, but would having seams half way along the arms present problems graphically? Something i'd have to test I guess. Any info on a starting place for this would be great.

[little walrus]

It depends on how realistic you want it. Like dismemberment only on death? Or the character can lose limbs and still be alive?

[old falcon]

It's workable, but extremely annoying. And some things are just not possible.
See this thread for more info: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/layered-blend-per-bone-in-a-skeletal-mesh-agnostic-base-animation-blueprint-template/765488

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, I looked into it too. It seems like it's fragile as heck, and there are very few guardrails preventing you from breaking them.

I wouldn't use one.

[nimble torrent]

Seams are usually hidden by clothing, so you can get away with a lot that way. Modular characters already often have segmented characters, so swapping out an arm mesh for a severed arm mesh isn't that much work.

[viscid willow]

That's really interesting, so you have a skeleton agnostic template, but your layer blends are handled with skeleton specific linked anim layers. Have i got that right?

[naive carbon]

does anyone know how to rig eyes in unreal? or any material that I can learn from it ?

[viscid willow]

rig them to do what exactly? Look at a target?

[naive carbon]

at first i just want to have basic control, like a couple of controls that the eyes aim at.

I think that would be IK controls am i right ?

[nimble torrent]

Mugen's setup is wild. I am impressed but also slightly alarmed.

[viscid willow]

I expect you'd want to aim your eye bone at a control

[nimble torrent]

Probably not. You're probably looking for an aim constraint.

[viscid willow]

Living on the edge

[nimble torrent]

And, to improve the effect, you also probably want to use a Pose Driver.

The pose driver can be used to make the rest of the eye react when the eyeball rotates.

It can take some doing, but the effect is usually worth it.

[viscid willow]

you can manipulate a pose driver with control rig?!

[nimble torrent]

Ah - no. They just asked how to rig them. I assumed they were talking about real time.

So I'd use an animation BP.

If you want to control them in CR, then you could use a post-process animBP to drive the poses.

[naive carbon]

this is what I'm planning.

I have all the eye "housing" controls on blend shapes

then i want drive it using a post process animBP.

but I suck at rigging

[nimble torrent]

I think you can control blend shapes from within CR.

[naive carbon]

I can, i did the test and went fine, wrinkles and all the eye candy

[nimble torrent]

Nice.

[naive carbon]

But thanks, i'll look at the aim constrain

[nimble torrent]

So yeah. Look for nodes called 'aim'.

👍

[naive carbon]

ok! thanks a lot

[nimble torrent]

Oh! Before you go!

[naive carbon]

yep

[nimble torrent]

If you have both eyes look precisely at the same thing, they tend to go crosseyed.

Usually the way I've set them up is to create a main control, and then one control for each eye as a child of that control.

So if you need to spread the eyes out to prevent them from being crosseyed, you can.

[naive carbon]

ohh I see. So I can cross them, and then manipulate all together.

[nimble torrent]

Yep.

[naive carbon]

got it! good call

[nimble torrent]

👍

[viscid willow]

To do that is there some kind of read/write in control rig to drive the blend shapes?

[nimble torrent]

I think there's a 'Set Curve Value' node.

It's a bit... indirect.

Like - morph targets react to curves with the same name.

So when you set the curve value, the mesh picks up on that and reacts.

[naive carbon]

yes!

[nimble torrent]

👍

[naive carbon]

I was kinda hard to figure out how to use it at sequencer, almost no information available.

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-patrick-star-noted-notes-gif-26231953

[hoary tusk]

Getting an error in UE5 about my skeleton having multiple roots? How do I fix this? This is my hierarchy for the skeleton in blender?

[viscid willow]

I think all your extra bones there, FootIK.L, ElbowPole.L etc you will want to parent under your root bone. Right now they all sit at the same level as the root so they're each probably being interpreted as a root bone

[hoary tusk]

what a brainlet mistake lmaoo, thanks man!

that fixed it

[viscid willow]

👍

The armature node doesn't make it clear ~~pls blender nuke it in the updates 🙏 ~~

[last plume]

Can you change your Blendspace Skeleton?

[viscid willow]

I think blend spaces are skeleton specific. So no I don't think you can once they're created. Unless someone knows otherwise.

[nimble torrent]

Nope!

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/well-there-it-is-jeff-goldblum-gif-14058551

[obsidian pawn]

hey guys, I'm working with the grenade throw animation from mixamo, but it has movement in it (the character walks forward) which I don't want. is there a way I can edit in UE5 to remove the movement?

Ah ok, so I found root motion lock, just need to stop the lower body from animating now!

[nimble torrent]

You could blend the grenade animation in only on the upper body!

[nimble torrent]

Using a node called Layered Blend Per Bone.

[obsidian pawn]

yea I've got one in, but its not working for some reason. that's ok, i found a not moving anim

[nimble torrent]

What does it do instead of work?

[obsidian pawn]

it was still blending in the legs. I had blend depth set to 6 and it still happened

its all good tho

[nimble torrent]

That... might be the reason.

Blend depth is how many bones it spreads the blend over.

If you want no blend at all, you use 0.

[obsidian pawn]

ohhhh interesting!

I'm using an asset cause I hate anims and that's how it came configured

[acoustic pike]

why do my bones look like this?

my bones are moving but the mesh isn't following them

[nimble torrent]

It looks like you have multiple skeletons in there.

One of them is moving, the one that the mesh is skinned too isn't.

[acoustic pike]

this is what it looks like in blender

[nimble torrent]

Yeah, so you can see that you have two separate sets of bones in there.

Where did you get this character from?

[acoustic pike]

https://www.deviantart.com/mmdcharizard/art/MMD-Newcomer-PS3-PS4-Godzilla-V2-DL-692515204

[acoustic pike]

ah i see now

ok, I deleted those extra bones

perhaps if I re-import the skeleton it might work?

didn't work

well if anyone has any idea on how to fix my issue, please feel free to educate me!

[nimble torrent]

Sorry, your skeleton is extremely complex looking, it's pretty clear that you also have some kind of control rig built over top of it.

Probably the person you need to ask what is going on is the person you got the model from.

[old falcon]

Yes, no other way around it. You cannot reference anything skeleton specific in a template, i.e. 80% of all ABP nodes lol

[old falcon]

I have since switched back to plain ABPs. Templates are just not worth the effort

But my setup in those is not any less alarming though, lol

[viscid willow]

Can you see a use case where they would be useful?

[old falcon]

If you never want to link a different ABP into a layer they can be useful. E.g. if you don't use linking at all.
Because then you just link the skeleton specific layers once at runtime and forget they ever existed.

The biggest problem is really that you cannot provide a sensible default implementation for a layer. So as soon as you unlink a layer you are left with nothing until you link again. And as far as I could see there is no easy way to "auto-link" a default ABP if a layer were to be left empty after unlinking.

Or if you have a very complex State Machine that you want to share across skeletons. Then they might be useful, too. But again, as soon as you need skeleton specific nodes that cannot be replaced by variables (e.g. LBPB) you enter a new dimension of inconvenience

[marsh schooner]

Hey guys, I haven’t played with the new skeleton editor yet. Does anyone know if it’s possible to take a skeleton, rig it, and turn that into a skeletal mesh in-editor?

[old falcon]

Like for example the UpperBodyBlend layer here. I used to link a default implementation on BeginPlay for this. But nothing is stopping me from accidentally unlinking it and being left with no UpperBodyBlend.
If I wanted to change the UpperBodyBlend temporarily at runtime, and then unlink that change, I'd also be left with an empty layer

[old falcon]

The new skeleton editor tools are for adding a skeleton to an already existing StaticMesh.
You'd have to import a static mesh first, then right click on it to convert to SkeletalMesh. Then you can add bones as you see fit

[arctic fern]

Man, 5.4's new auto-retargeting features so far seem to be an absolute disaster as far as I'm concerned

Sure, sure, this skeleton made in auto-rig pro supposedly matches the fortnite skeleton 100% but then you try to retarget and it's a jittery mess that's halfway through the floor

[old falcon]

If Epic allowed us to give those layers a default implementation in the skeleton-specific child ABP of the template then I would 100% use them everywhere

[arctic fern]

My attempts at wrangling the new 5.4 retargeter has been a massive headache, the auto-retarget without a manual retargeter seemingly looks fine but the result is the model suddenly expanding to a massive size and out of position

And the manual IK retargeter's results are so much worse now

[deep osprey]

im a beginner at unreal and for some reason, when i press the play button, my characters pose returns to default standing

[viscid willow]

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-patrick-star-noted-notes-gif-26231953

[arctic fern]

I think the 5.4 retargeter is bugged when it comes to skeletons created by Auto-Rig Pro, it doesn't seem to size them correctly

[lusty venture]

from blender? there’s some funky stuff you have to do to export from blender to unreal iirc

[viscid willow]

yep ☝️ scale is a very common problem coming from blender to unreal

[arctic fern]

The thing is, it was working just fine previously, minus having to reduce the scale of the skeletal mesh on import

Scaling it down manually in Blender, from my experience, introduces so many more problems

But now it feels like the new retargeter is being inconsistent on whether it wants to take scale into account or not

[viscid willow]

We've linked this one previously, but if scale is your problem I'd suggest this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbWfoyf4MqI

sometimes the scale can be misleading, the model/skel mesh looks correct but the bone scale can be wrong which leads to plenty of issues

[arctic fern]

The thing is, again, this was not a problem before

[viscid willow]

interesting, and your root scale has been a cool consistent 1.0?

[arctic fern]

Same scale as the actual mesh, at least

[nimble torrent]

Does that that mean it's 1.0?

The retargeting has changed, and appears to be more sensitive to certain things. I think it's using limb and stride lengths to improve retargeting results.

[arctic fern]

So I decided to do a quick re-rig used a re-scaled version of the mesh (with the scale for the meshes applied so the scale is back to 1), with a quick bind without weight adjustments, imported into Unreal, and... WELP turns out the scale of the original mesh was the problem all along

Auto-Rig Pro is normally supposed to handle that problem

[nimble torrent]

Blender and Unreal really disagree about a lot of things, especially scale - so it's almost always worth checking what the scale on the root bone of your skeleton is when you import it.

If only to make sure that Blender hasn't done any 'forgetting about your FBX options' stuff.

[arctic fern]

Well, Auto-Rig Pro has its own export tool that normally handles that nonsense

It specifically has settings for Unity and Unreal export

But yeah looks like the new retargeting is much more sensitive to that sort of thing

Maybe someone should pin a message to let other folks know to absolutely make sure to scale the mesh properly in Blender, even if using Auto-Rig Pro

[viscid willow]

was the scale 50 by any chance?

typically I see it as 100 but ive seen a lot of people with a scale of 50 recently

the scale thing comes up every other day on this channel 😅

[arctic fern]

More like 10

Again, it looks like it was something Auto-Rig Pro normally smooths over, looks like taking the time to set the scale properly in Blender is absolutely essential now

Which kinda sucks because it's a pain to do

You'd be surprised how easy it is to completely misjudge how large your model is supposed to be while scaling it and you won't know until you've test-exported

[deft furnace]

Hey, I bought some animations that had a sword in them and it's not adding them, I'm a bit worried on what to do.

[nimble torrent]

Sorry, not quite sure I follow. Is unreal not adding the animations, or are the animations not adding the sword?

[full mirage]

Hello, this is my WIP Lego!

[arctic fern]

Just an FYI, I think the retargeting menu could do with some improvements, I wish I could just select the animation assets I've already selected rather than pick them out from potentially hundreds of others without any folder structure to figure out which is which, especially with some marketplace assets

[twilit totem]

hey all, need some help as i never used animations really, got a pack and using it wiht synty, but retargetting leaves funny results because the base ue5 mannqeuin has a different tpose, how can I change its A pose to a T pose? Is there a way I can modify the bone?

nvm decided to just delete the pack it came with, was a broken scam pack :)

[deft furnace]

Unreal isn't adding the sword

[nimble torrent]

OK, so when you say 'it's not adding the sword' do you mean:

1. It's adding the sword mesh when I import the animations, but not adding it while playing back the animations.
2. It's not adding the sword mesh when I import the animations.

[nimble torrent]

Looks awesome!

Nice job on the mouth swapping!

[deft furnace]

I'm guessing 1

[nimble torrent]

Why are you guessing?

[deft furnace]

I'm not very experienced when it comes to this.

[nimble torrent]

OK, well. Animations don't contain meshes, just bones and movement. So an animation is never going to add a sword into a characters hand.

It just allows you to add a sword, and have it animated correctly.

(if it works as advertised, which is only sometimes true)

I would be surprised if an animation pack came with meshes. So the sword is probably not there.

You'll need to make your own!